Canal body-parts murderer suspected of more killings

Detectives believe that at least three more women could have been killed by sadistic John Sweeney who was yesterday convicted of murdering two former girlfriends.

Carpenter Sweeney cut up the bodies of Melissa Halstead and Paula Fields and threw the bits in canals in England and Holland.

Now police in both countries fear other former lovers met the same fate.

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Sweeney also launched an axe attack at girlfriend nurse Delia Balmer who was only saved when a neighbour arrived to help.

He would boast of his woman-hating attacks in paintings and verse he wrote, the Old Bailey heard.

In one picture showing a bloody axe, he called himself the Scalp Hunter. In a poem he said he had fed Miss Halstead to the fish.

Some 300 paintings, wooden sculptures and poems were found at his home when he was arrested while on the run in 2001.

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And similar works were found in his prison cell at Gartree Prison when he was arrested for murder last year.

Police found many clues to his twisted mind and murderous attacks in the works.

Liverpool-born Sweeney, 54, was found guilty of murdering Miss Halstead and Miss Fields, and perverting justice.

He will be sentenced today after refusing to leave the cells yesterday.

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The judge, Mr Justice Saunders, said he would give Sweeney a last chance to change his mind and go into the dock to be sentenced.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, asked the judge to impose a whole life term on the life sentences he faces so he would never be released.

Sweeney is already serving four life terms imposed in 2002 for the attempted murder in 1994 of Miss Balmer and having four guns when he was arrested while on the run.

Miss Balmer said he kept her prisoner in her flat and left her scarred for life after she received life-threatening injuries.

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She said: “He had the axe above his head ready to finish me off. Then the man next door came out and risked his life. I had just curled up ready to go.”

Former model Miss Halstead, 33, from the US, was killed in 1990. Her dismembered body was thrown into a canal in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

She was only identified 18 years later by DNA, although her head and hands have never been found.

She had started a relationship with Sweeney who followed her to Vienna where he attacked her, and then to Holland where he killed her.

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Her sister, Chance O’Hara, said: “She told me, if she ever went missing, that John Sweeney would have killed her. He had threatened that he would kill her and he would make sure no-one would ever find her body.”

Sweeney wrote on the back of a scratchcard: “Poor old Melissa, chopped her up in bits, food to feed the fish, Amsterdam was the pits.”